On June 24, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognize Palestine as an independent state in September; he may unwittingly have jump-started the fight for a new state more than 2,250 miles away.
Africa, of course, is filled with states whose arbitrary boundaries reflect colonial divisions. The legacy of most states is a single colonial power. That was the case with French West Africa and the Sahel, for example, or the British colonies lying along the continent’s Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts. Other territories changed colonial masters. Germany lost Namibia, Cameroon, Togo, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi after World War I, with South Africa, the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium taking over various German possessions as war booty. In a few cases, multiple European states colonized different parts of the same territory. France and Spain divided up Morocco, for example, with Spain carving out territories on its north coast and creating the Western Sahara out of whole cloth.
The Cameroon Crisis?
Cameroon is the other former colony that had two colonial masters. Germany colonized Cameroon in 1884 as Berlin plunged into the “scramble for Africa.” After World War I, Great Britain and France took responsibility for different portions of the territory
. The British administered a strip of land alongside Nigeria, while the French ran the rest of the territory. When French Cameroun gained independence in 1960, but the British-run trusteeship initially resisted joining Cameroun.
Ultimately, the northern section of the British region joined Nigeria, while “Southern Cameroons” joined the former French portion on the condition that Cameroon would be a federal republic, with the Francophone and Anglophone regions being co-equals.
Cameroon and its backers in the French government broke their promise, dissolving the country’s federalism and subjugating its English speakers. While the French speakers enjoyed relative privilege, the Cameroonian government descended into dictatorship and repressed the entire population. Since its 1960 independence, the country has had only two presidents: Ahmadou Ahidjo who ruled until 1982, and the now 92-year-old Paul Biya who remains the titular president.
In reality, it appears the French embassy in Yaounde and a small coterie of Biya aides run the country while Biya languishes in a French hospital where rumors circulate he has Alzheimer’s or dementia. Under Macron, the French government has been particularly cynical, propping up Biya in return for the Cameroonian dictator signing off on multimillion-dollar purchases of French military equipment.
What Happens Next?
Almost a decade ago, Cameroon’s Anglophone had enough: Teachers, lawyers, and civil society activists took to the streets.
Repression skyrocketed. English-speakers suffered arbitrary arrest, torture, and worse. Biya’s French-backed regime has reportedly killed thousands and displaced more than a million more. Rather than acquiesce to repression, Cameroon’s Anglophones fought back and now demand their own country—Ambazonia. Macron’s government has demanded European states blacklist and repress Ambazonia activists in other countries. Lucas Ayaba Cho, for example, remains imprisoned in Norway.
France may demand Cameroon stay unified, but Macron cannot have it both ways. The Ambazonians have always had a legitimate claim to independence; they are culturally distinct and have a particular territory that is larger than the Gaza Strip and West Bank, as well as African countries like Gambia or Equatorial Guinea. At least until Hamas launched its war on October 7, 2023, Israel was more generous and accommodating of Palestinians than Cameroon or France have been of Ambazonians or, for that matter, Nigeria has been of Biafrans.
Macron has set the precedent; there can only be two explanations if he does not extend it to Ambazonia. Either anti-Semitism motivates his embrace of Hamas and desire to punish Israel, or racism leads him to conclude Ambazonian Africans do not deserve the same status he bestows on those with whiter skin.
Either way, it is time for the Palais de l’Élysée to explain and rectify its hypocrisy.
About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. The opinions and views expressed are his own. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units.
Jim
July 27, 2025 at 11:32 am
For the people in the countries or should I say regions which have been caught up in these historical tug of wars starting off with European colonialism and, now, moving into a post-colonial world, I hope it works out without the suffering & killing which always seems to accompany the twilight and breakdown of the post-colonial order.
But concern over French influence or French neo-colonialism in Africa, I don’t care, one way or the other. Actually, I’m not a fan of French colonialism, as France was a brutal ruler, most of the time. Quite venal in their operation of colonies or their relations with post-colonial fledgling states (these states aren’t “fledgling” after 50 odd years, but somehow it still seems like it.).
France is solidly coming to grips with the fact they have lost significant influence and benefits coming from their post-colonial relationships with West Africa.
I don’t think average Frenchmen care about France’s post-colonial relations in Africa (perhaps, they should).
But, increasingly, they do care about the ongoing treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and Macron is responding to the political pressure with his proposal for recognition.
Many in Israel feel they don’t need anybody’s approval beyond the United States, if even that.
But they are wrong, Israel is not an island, unto itself, in isolation, but should strive to be a member in good standing in the Community of Nations.
Right now, Israel has gone rogue in the eyes of much of the World and, thus, stands apart from the Community of Nations.
This is a sad and great mistake by Israeli leaders.
Jim
July 27, 2025 at 12:06 pm
Historical addendum: colonialism is and has been an elite preoccupation and interest.
The average European of a colonizing country was greatly removed from any influence, in Britain the King’s Privy Council ran overseas foreign policy, not the parliament. This removal of a country’s colonialism from democratic process and practices was the rule in Europe, not the exception.
(Three factors brought foreign policy in Britain under Parliamentary control, the Regency of King George III during his insanity, and Queen Victoria being uninterested in affairs of state for the second half of the 19th Century… and the power of the purse, i. e. the Whigs objecting to tax money being spent on subduing the colonial revolution going on in their North American colonies.)
And, France ripped itself apart driving average Frenchmen to fight over Algeria which while a colony was treated as if it was an integral and undivided part of France with deputies in the National Assembly.
The woes of that war collapsed the 4th Republic of France.
And, after that experience average Frenchmen were even more detached from colonial administration due to the sour taste the Algerian War left in many French palates… and it discredited the right in French politics… although, de Gaulle did make a comeback.
Remember, at heart Israel is a Settler-Colonial enterprise of mostly European origin of the Jewish diaspora after WWII who were colonists in the Levant.
Israeli leaders should seek good relations with neighboring states, not domination by fear… that breeds hostility and… as we see… war.
So much for history lessons.
A lesson for Israel?
Jim
July 27, 2025 at 12:43 pm
Also, functionally, nascent “Israel” during the interwar years between WWI and WWII was a de facto colony of Britain in the Levant (not exactly a colony, in a formal sense, but Britain was the overseeing authority by mandate from the League of Nations).
Britain’s Empire collapsed during after WWII as a result of the Empire’s bankruptcy and subjects yearning for self-rule after WWII all the pious declarations from colonial rulers about “resistance” during the course of the war.
Anyway, nascent Israelis revolted against British Rule and after the King David Hotel bombing, Britain rolled up the sidewalk and gathered their marbles and went home.
That created a political vacuum which the colonial settlers took advantage of and asserted their independence as a nation-state in 1948.
Israel is a settler-colonialist nation-state.
And, the history of such, is one of violence and brutal subjugation of the “locals” to cement the settler-colonialist position in the created and nascent nation-state.
This history has been repeated many many times by many nations, and peoples, including our own, but that was mostly 19th Century, and before… this is the 21st Century… can the same patterns work, today?
We are seeing it transit before our eyes like the Sun crossing the sky.